Updates: 1) Rather than removing the original post, I have changed it so (a) it contains an apology and (b) we the marketing community can discuss the right and wrong of newsjacking in the comments. 2) HubSpot is making a $5,000 donation to the Red Cross to support those affected by Sandy.

I want to be very clear and apologize for the article. The tone was completely wrong and insensitive. We are deeply concerned about our friends affected by the storm and we even have many employees still without power. The tone of this article was in poor taste. Obviously we had nothing to do with the other companies mentioned who did the newsjacking, we were reporting on those attempts. However the author of the article passed a value judgement on them and we should not have done that. The tone of the article should have been "Are these newsjacking attempts right or wrong?" or "Should you newsjack a natural disaster?". I think then having the marketing community discuss the merits of the different newsjacking attempts in the comments is a worthwhile discussion. I have taken the article down.

There are 2 issues here: 1) The comment Morgan made is inappropriate, crude and reflects poorly on HubSpot. Let me apologize on behalf of the company. We will be discussing this with him. 2) I still think you do not need a social media policy. If this comment had been made in email, on the phone, in person at an event, or by carrier pigeon, it is equally inappropriate and a social media policy would not have helped those cases. Companies should just expect employees to use good judgement, and hold them to that standard in all forms of communication.

Great to hear from marketers who are re-thinking the traditional ways and figuring out how to make everything more inbound, including the organization of the team.

@Mike - We took the data from Marketing Grader and used that to create the infographic about the republican candidates. Time will tell if other people run with the infographic and the newsjacking is successful.

@Lindsay - Actually, the initial reports and allegations made against Newt Gingrich turned out to be false if you folow the story all the way through. This is why the mainstream media never really ran completely with the story. This would have been a headline on CNN for weeks if it had been true. This Mashable article was the final and true analysis of the whole thing: http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/twitter-analysis-vindicates-gingrich/ Quote: "So there is no smoking gun to suggest that Gingrich, or any of these politicians, bought any of their followers."

Like you, I've been doing inbound marketing for a long time, and I am glad that more and more people are starting to come around to the path of "truth and justice". Keep up the good work!